Month after laying off hundreds in Siri and Vision team, Apple cuts: The wider industry impact

Month after laying off hundreds in Siri and Vision team, Apple cuts jobs in Fitness+; affected staff include …

The reported job cuts come a month after laid off more than 200 people across the teams building Siri and the Vision Pro last month.

In the weekly Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman said that the job cuts indicate “hanging priorities for the service”, adding that the iPhone maker was previously “reevaluating its Fitness+ platform, a competitor to Peloton content that’s now overseen by services chief Eddy Cue and health leader Sumbul Desai”. “This past week, I’m told, Apple enacted another round of increasingly common layoffs by cutting a handful of employees working on Fitness+,” Gurman said in the newsletter. Gurman noted that new releases for audio content will drop in frequency, but “they’re not going away completely — as of now”.

Apple has reportedly laid off staff working on Fitness+, reports Bloomberg. As stated in the newsletter, the affected workers included staff who contributed to the audio side of the service — things like the Time to Walk and Time to Run audio sessions you can listen to from your Apple Watch without watching a video.

In August, Gurman reported that Apple cut more than 200 people across the teams building Siri and the Vision Pro, according to a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman. About 100 roles have gone from the Vision Pro organisation, and about 100 more from Siri and the software groups around it. The split is roughly even. Also caught in the round is Intelligent Systems Experience, a team inside Apple’s software engineering arm that builds AI features sitting across iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Apple confirmed the cuts without confirming the number. Staff who lost jobs can apply elsewhere inside Apple.

The company said it is realigning teams “to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users,” and that new roles are being created even as existing ones disappear. The other is being told to wait. What makes this round worth reading closely is that one headcount figure is hiding two completely different stories. One team is being rebuilt. Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.